Proprietors Plan Pub, ‘Biergarten’ At Garrattsville

1-15-10


GARRATTSVILLE


You can imagine the Williamsons and their friends, having a beer or two – a Pork Slap or a Moo Thunder, maybe – and brainstorming.
The product of these rap sessions – doggerel, slogans, plus a profound thought or two – are Magic-Markered on a cider-block wall in the Butternuts Beer & Ale brewery, a barn where Norman S. Walker’s family milked Holsteins for 100 years.
“He’s not a bad skate; he just skates bad.”
“From field to face.”
And – eureka! – “Heinnieweisse?  Like Miami Vice?”
The name doesn’t appear to be a literal translation of anything.  (Chuck Williamson will tell you it means beer made from wheat.) 
But the cheerful serendipity that surrounds everything about the Butternuts Beer & Ale – just check out www.butternutsbeerandale.com – suggests Chuck and Ann and their friends were just having a little fun with you, me and anyone else who might stumble across their brands by happenstance.
Happenstance is the right word around here – for the time being – because although the Williamsons are entering their fifth year
of brewing in Otsego County, there are few places locally – Spurbeck’s in Cooperstown; Hometown Deli in Oneonta among them – that retail the product.
Mostly, the brewery had been providing Pork Slap (a pale ale, the best seller), Moo Thunder stout, Snapperhead IPA and Heinieweisse to wholesalers that are distributing it in a half-dozen states from Massachusetts to Georgia.  (Next, Florida.)
In the next few months, that will change, as the Williamsons are developing a pub at the Route 51 brewery and putting the personnel in place to guide regular tours. (There’s plenty of room out back, too, that will eventually accommodate a biergarten.)
Appropriately, the venture had its roots in serendipity.
In the early ‘90s, while a junior at Franklin Lewis High School in Flushing, Chuck interned at the Queens Museum in the shadow of the 1964 World Fair’s Unisphere, and got a couple of pals together to help the museum director move to Staten Island.
Among her boxes of books was a first edition of Charlie Papazian’s “Joy of Homebrewing,” and Chuckgot it as a thank-you gift: “It never even dawned on me that you could make beer. It was just this amazing concept.”
At the time, micro-breweries and homebrewing were still in the “fledgling” stage on the East Coast – the California industry was going strong – but Chuck found Mark Burford, who was pioneering New York Homebrew in Franklin Square, and was able to buy some equipment.
The then-17-year-old bought home-brewing supplies and was soon busy in his parents’ kitchen – his teacher dad and nurse mom looked the other way, to his delight – experimenting with various concoctions. 
When Chuck graduated from high school, he apprenticed with an A-C firm, but he continued brewing Wednesday nights (all night long), and the fresh beer had to be imbibed that weekend, or it would spoil.  (So life was tough for Chuck and his buddies.)
When Burford went on to co-found the Long Island Brewery in Jericho, one of the region’s first breweries and brew pubs, Chuck joined him as his first apprentice.
By 9-11, he and a partner, Leo Bongiorno, were warehousing malt (and trading in malt commodities) and consulting for Park Slope Brewing Co., a brew pub on the tip of Red Hook – within sight of the Twin Towers.
The partners had been considering a “barn project” – “a mainstay in Europe” and, less so, the Midwest – and the events of that day fast-tracked their aspirations.
They found real-estate even as far as Delaware County too expensive – they wanted 100 acres for sustainable farming, in addition to a brewery – and found themselves in Garrattsville, talking to dairyman Tim Miller, who had bought the old Walter farm a few years before but no longer needed it.
They signed a contract on Sept. 12, 2002, and closed the deal on April 1, 2002.
By then, Chuck had married Ann Smith, whose parents had moved to Queens from Ireland.  “It’s a good thing she likes beer,” the husband said.  The two moved into the old farmhouse, and Ann worked in the kitchen at The Otesaga for a couple of years as brewery ramped up.
The partners got some financing from the county IDA, the OCDO and Wilber Bank; since they’d been running a business, they had cash flow, contacts and products – they’d already contracted with New York’s Typhoon Brewery for “batch brewing.”
The 15-barrel Downtown Brewery in Wilmington, Del., was going out of business in Delaware, and they got a deal on the tanks and other equipment.
It takes four hours to package a batch, and 15 barrels translates into 200 cases of beer, so Butternuts can turned out 9,600 cans of beer a day. 
Last year, the brewery produced 2,700 barrels. (36,000 cases, or 86,400
Unlike most micro-breweries, this one uses cans, not bottles.  For one thing, a small canning line had come on the market.  Plus, Chuck thought cans would provide “a way to stand out and be different.”  And, beside, light-tight cans prevent the product’s degradation.
“Cans are less expensive and lighter, so you can get more on a pallet,” he siad.  A New England Motor Freight truck shows up weekly to carry the week’s production to 15 wholesalers.
Chuck and Lou Bongiorno, who has since left to take on another brewing project in Pennsylvania, purposely devised a “flavor profile” – from dark to light – designed to fit a range of tastes.
“Someone can like one beer,” said the brewer, “and not like the other beers.”